Pages

Monday, February 6, 2017

Neil Wilson — It’s not a matter of believing. It is a matter of fact and requirement in society.

Neil has been using the term "social value" lately in contrast to market value. In a market state, value is exclusively market value and if market value cannot be turned into sufficient profit to justify investment, then the project doesn't get done.

The three rolls of the modern state are provision of security, order and welfare. These have high social value but little market value in that the goods they involves are neither rivalrous nor excludable.

These are chiefly public goods that fall under public purpose. A state is chiefly concerned with social value rather than market value, so these matters fall under the purview of the state rather than the private sector.

Maintaining full employment is a social value rather than a market value where the private sector is either unwilling or unable to step up. A currency sovereign is always able to purchase idle resources including labor in excess of job offers.

Ok: so U.S. is designed to enable the people's "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." A good motto, and (as an aside) one partially copied by Ho Chi Minh in his creation of the Vietnamese Constitution , a by-product of his experience earlier in the century of U.S. versions of liberty.

Canada has sometimes been represented by the phrase "peace, order, and good government". This three-part slogan has been subject to a certain mythologizing by belly-gazing Canadian nationalists, but, as Donald Creighton make clear in his 1941 report to the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, the expression was used interchangeably in the 19th century by Canadian and Imperial officials (in their dealings with the "dominions", i.e. Canada, S-A, NZ and Aust.) with the expression Peace, Welfare and Good Government. The term Welfare referred not to its more narrow modern echoes, but to the protection of the common weal, the general public good. Good government referred to good public administration, on the one hand, but also had echoes of what we now talk of as good governance, which incorporates the notion of appropriate self-governance by civil society actors, since one element of good government was thought to be its limitation to its appropriate sphere of responsibility. Order is the authority of the sovereign.

The US was founded by rich white slave owners who didn't want to pay taxes. Mission accomplished

That's (partly) true. All were well-to do but some were not slave owners. Regardless, the founding of America reflected conditions that persisted. Idealism on one hand and pragmatism about status, power and wealth.

This results in many contradictions and a lot of hypocrisy.

The worst case is when the ruling elite uses idealism as a veneer for pursuing their own private interests, both individually and also for their cohort.

... that we need things to get a lot worse otherwise the proles (whom said revolutionaries always look down upon) won't revolt.

1) I don't want things to get worse but better and by non-violent means ONLY.2) I don't look down on people because:a) He who despises his neighbor lacks sense ... Proverbs 11:12b) He who despises his neighbor sins ... Proverbs 14:21c) etc. from the Bible.